Barliman Butterbrain - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

littlemanpoet · 05-03-2003, 08:50 PM

Diamond, you're speaking as a writer just as much as a reader. My local writer's group have also commented that in their rereading of Tolkien, they have found that he trespasses into Telling rather than Showing on numerous occasions, and you may have found an example. I'm going to have to reread LotR myself for this, because having grown up with the story, I've been too close to it and ignorant about showing versus telling to notice - until now. Having read the quote from Gandalf, it seems that the compliment to Butterbur is rather reserved. But as Nar has pointed out (in a certain upcoming online publication), [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] Tolkien does use Gandalf as a cypher for proferring huge amounts of "correct" information about all kinds of things, because he always uses Gandalf as his truth teller. So anything we get from Gandalf's lips are Tolkien's way of, frankly, telling the reader what JRRT doesn't have the time to show the reader. Interesting point! One of these days I'm going to have to look for all the "tellings" rather than "showings". My bet is that Tollers did it a lot, and not only through Gandalf.

05-03-2003, 08:50 PM	#12
littlemanpoet Itinerant Songster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Edge of Faerie Posts: 7,066	Diamond, you're speaking as a writer just as much as a reader. My local writer's group have also commented that in their rereading of Tolkien, they have found that he trespasses into Telling rather than Showing on numerous occasions, and you may have found an example. I'm going to have to reread LotR myself for this, because having grown up with the story, I've been too close to it and ignorant about showing versus telling to notice - until now. Having read the quote from Gandalf, it seems that the compliment to Butterbur is rather reserved. But as Nar has pointed out (in a certain upcoming online publication), [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] Tolkien does use Gandalf as a cypher for proferring huge amounts of "correct" information about all kinds of things, because he always uses Gandalf as his truth teller. So anything we get from Gandalf's lips are Tolkien's way of, frankly, telling the reader what JRRT doesn't have the time to show the reader. Interesting point! One of these days I'm going to have to look for all the "tellings" rather than "showings". My bet is that Tollers did it a lot, and not only through Gandalf.